Republican Sen. Susan Collins won't vote for Trump

Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine explained why she will not be voting for Donald Trump.   He "does not reflect historical Republican values nor the inclusive approach to governing that is critical to healing the divisions in our country. . . 

"I have become increasingly dismayed by his constant stream of cruel comments . . . . his attacks directed at people who could not respond on an equal footing . . . that revealed Mr. Trump as unworthy of being our president. . . .  Instead, he opts to mock the vulnerable and inflame prejudices by attacking ethnic and religious minorities."

Ralph

Dozens of former Republican national security officials sign powerful letter opposing Trump

They have all served in high places in Republican administrations:  a former Director of the CIA, two former Secretaries of Homeland Security, several former Deputy National Security Advisors;  numerous former second level officials in the Department of Justice, the State Department, the Defense Department, and the National Security Council.   Fifty in all signed the following open letter -- an urgent warning against electing Donald Trump President and Commander-in-Chief of the United States, saying that he would be reckless and dangerous.

Let me emphasize again.   These are some of the most respected names who have served in high places in the White House and its Cabinet departments -- all in Republican administrations.   This is not a partisan, political letter put out by Democrats.   

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STATEMENT BY FORMER NATIONAL SECURITY OFFICIALS

"The undersigned individuals have all served in senior national security and/or foreign policy positions in Republican Administrations, from  Richard Nixon to George W. Bush.   We have worked directly on national security issues with these Rebpulican Presidents and/or their principal advisers during wartime and other periods of crisis required of a President of the United States.

None of us will vote for Donald Trump.

From a foreign policy perspective, Donald Trump is not qualified to be President and Commander-in-Chief.   Indeed, we are convinced that he would be a dangerous President and would put at risk our country’s national security and well-being.

Most fundamentally, Mr. Trump lacks the character, values, and experience to be President.  He weakens U.S. moral authority as the leader of the free world.   He appears to lack basic knowledge about and belief in the U.S. Constitution, U.S. laws, and U.S. institutions, including religious tolerance, freedom of the press, and an independent judiciary.

In addition, Mr. Trump has demonstrated repeatedly that he has little understanding of America’s vital national interests, its complex diplomatic challenges, its indispensable alliances, and the democratic values on which U.S. foreign policy must be based.  At the same time, he persistently compliments our adversaries and threatens our allies and friends.   Unlike previous Presidents who had limited experience in foreign affairs, Mr. Trump has shown no interest in educating himself.   He continues to display an alarming ignorance of basic facts of contemporary international politics.   Despite his lack of knowledge, Mr. Trump claims that he understands foreign affairs and “knows more about ISIS than the generals do.”

Mr. Trump lacks the temperament to be President.  In our experience, a President must be willing to listen to his advisers and department heads;  must encourage consideration of conflicting views;  and must be disciplined, control emotions, and act only after reflection and careful deliberation.  A President must maintain cordial relationships with leaders of countries of different backgrounds and must have their respect and trust.

In our judgment, Mr. Trump has none of these critical qualities.  He is unable or unwilling to separate truth from falsehood.  He does not encourage conflicting views.  He lacks self-control and acts impetuously.  He cannot tolerate personal criticism.  He has alarmed our closest allies with his erratic behavior.  All of these are dangerous qualities in an individual who aspires to be President and Commander-in-Chief, with command of the U. S. nuclear arsenal.

We understand that many Americans are profoundly frustrated with the federal government and its inability to solve pressing domestic and international problems.  We also know that many have doubts about Hillary Clinton, as do many of us.  But Donald Trump is not the answer to America’s daunting challenges and to this crucial election.  We are convinced that in the Oval Office, he would be the most reckless President in American history.

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The letter is signed by 50 former high officials in national security, homeland security, and foreign affairs from Republican administrations.   This paints the Republican National Committee, Paul Ryan, and Mitch McConnell into a corner.   To continue to promote Donald Trump as their choice to be President. despite such overwhelming condemnation of his suitability for the job, is going to be a tough decision for them.

This is no longer about political policies.   This is about national security.

Ralph

Bumper sticker noticed last night on a car

The Other National Deficit:

Critical  Thinking

Failure of trickle down economics in Kansas leads to voters' revolt at the polls.

Ready for some news that isn't about Donald Trump?   Here we go. 
A recent opinion from the Editorial Board of the New York Times was titled:  "Moderation Rears Its Head in Kansas."    This is another indicator that conservative economic policies have failed in Gov. Sam Brownbeck "experiment" in Kansas:  tax cuts for the well to do and budgets slashed for education, infrastructure jobs, and basic services for citizens.  Schools were the worst victims, such that one school system had to end the school year early for lack of money.

Voters finally spoke out in their primary election last week.   The extreme conservatives lost out -- big time -- to more moderate Republicans.   It's also a setback for the Koch Brothers money machine that backed the losing candidates.   This editorial deserves to be read in full because it succinctly shows the failure of austerity government measures, especially in a time of recession.

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"Moderate Republicans who have been fighting off extinction ventured onto the primary ballot this week in the deeply red state of Kansas and scored a dozen impressive victories. The insurgents knocked off conservative loyalists of Gov. Sam Brownback, whose disastrous experiment in trickle-down economics has busted the state budget and angered voters suffering from slashed services.

"While they were at it, Republican voters chose to send Representative Tim Huelskamp into retirement after a six-year career as one of the leading Tea Party obstructionists in Washington. His defeat was a setback as well for two of the naysaying lawmaker’s right-wing backers — the Koch brothers’ political money machine and the Club for Growth, a conservative advocacy group.

"No one is yet proclaiming the start of a national revival of moderation in the G.O.P. But the primary results are an encouraging sign that voters in this election year will, if provoked, look beyond the statements of ideological crusaders to demand positive results in their lives. In the Kansas Statehouse, at least 11 Brownback loyalists, including the Senate majority leader, were defeated by candidates who drew support from voters appalled at deepening budget cuts in education, infrastructure and other basic services. 

"After his election in the antigovernment Tea Party surge of 2010, Mr. Brownback fully indulged the Republican fiction that huge upper-bracket tax cuts for individuals and businesses — and his were the largest in the state’s history — would somehow trigger healthy revenue flows and create jobs. None of that happened. Instead, the budget shortfalls from cutting taxes led Mr. Brownback and the Republican Legislature to cut hundreds of millions of dollars from education, sending the public school system into a crisis that continues;  state agencies were shut and jobs eliminated; and sweeping cutbacks ranged from basic welfare to the state university system.

“My focus is to create a red-state model that allows the Republican ticket to say, ‘See, we’ve got a different way, and it works,’ ” Mr. Brownback bragged as he and other conservative hard-liners pursued the party’s supply-side fantasies. It certainly has been a different way, and it plainly doesn’t work.

"If nothing else, the nation can now see the folly that results from the trickle-down foolishness that mainline Republicans like the House speaker, Paul Ryan, still try to peddle. Voters can also see that that some Republicans, as in Kansas, may now be willing to take a second look at trickle-down politicians and decide that someone more moderate is a better bet."

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We can't over-emphasize the importance of this.   Brownback set this up, calling it an experiment to prove the conservative economic plan works -- cut taxes and reduce spending.   Well, he asked for it -- and the "NO" answer has been clear for some time, as Kansas reeled from one economic crisis to another.   Last week, the voters gave him their answer.

It's an important piece of data that, even more clearly than Europe, shows how austerity measures are exactly the wrong way to deal with a recession.   Countries that went the austerity route were slower in recovering than the U.S. which, thanks to the Obama policy of government stimulus to create jobs, save banks and the auto industry, made our recovery faster and better than Europe's.    It would have been even better if a larger stimulus had been used and continued longer, but Obama got as much as congress would allow.   Maybe now, with this Kansas data, we'll do even better next time.

And watch for the other side of this story -- Minnesota's success by following Democratic principles -- in tomorrow's post.

Ralph

Ex-CIA chief endorses Clinton; calls Donald Trump "an unwitting agent of the Russian Federation"

Michael Morell spent several years as Deputy Director of the CIA during his 33 year career in the agency under both Democratic and Republican presidents.   He was with George W. Bush as Deputy Director when we were attacked on Sept 11;  he was with President Obama when we took out Osama bin Laden in 2011.   He is now retired, and has written an op-ed, published Friday by the New York Times.  Morell identifies himself as having no party affiliation and, as a career governmental official, has always remained silent about his preference for president.   But . . .

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"No longer. On Nov. 8, I will vote for Hillary Clinton. Between now and then, I will do everything I can to ensure that she is elected as our 45th president.

"Two strongly held beliefs have brought me to this decision. First, Mrs. Clinton is highly qualified to be commander in chief. I trust she will deliver on the most important duty of a president — keeping our nation safe.  Second, Donald J. Trump is not only unqualified for the job, but he may well pose a threat to our national security.

"I spent four years working with Mrs. Clinton when she was secretary of state, most often in the White House Situation Room. In these critically important meetings, I found her to be prepared, detail-oriented, thoughtful, inquisitive and willing to change her mind if presented with a compelling argument. . . . 

"Mrs. Clinton was an early advocate of the raid that brought Bin Laden to justice, in opposition to some of her most important colleagues on the National Security Council. During the early debates about how we should respond to the Syrian civil war, she was a strong proponent of a more aggressive approach, one that might have prevented the Islamic State from gaining a foothold in Syria. . . .

"In sharp contrast to Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Trump has no experience on national security. Even more important, the character traits he has exhibited during the primary season suggest he would be a poor, even dangerous, commander in chief. . . . his obvious need for self-aggrandizement, his overreaction to perceived slights, his tendency to make decisions based on intuition, his refusal to change his views based on new information, his routine carelessness with the facts, his unwillingness to listen to others and his lack of respect for the rule of law.

"The dangers that flow from Mr. Trump’s character are not just risks that would emerge if he became president. It is already damaging our national security. President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia was a career intelligence officer, trained to identify vulnerabilities in an individual and to exploit them. That is exactly what he did early in the primaries. Mr. Putin played upon Mr. Trump’s vulnerabilities by complimenting him. He responded just as Mr. Putin had calculated. . . . 

"In the intelligence business, we would say that Mr. Putin had recruited Mr. Trump as an unwitting agent of the Russian Federation. . . .    

"My training as an intelligence officer taught me to call it as I see it. This is what I did for the C.I.A. This is what I am doing now. Our nation will be much safer with Hillary Clinton as president."

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This is a serious, non-partisan man who speaks from experience in the CIA and in the White House Situation Room.  Further, everything he says adds up to a coherent narrative.   This is not a wild-eyed conspiracy theorist.  I believe him.

I am somewhat less convinced by an article by Mark Sumner that I will quote from in a coming post that suggests that Trump is not  an "unwitting" agent but may actually be more calculated in his tilt toward cooperating with Putin's attempt to undermine European unity and NATO in particular.

Or at the least that his campaign chief, Paul Manafort, is manipulating him that way.   What former CIA chief Morell says here does nothing to undermine Sumner's charges;  and we know that Manafort has long-time close ties and business relationships in Russia and Ukraine.    And there's a strong possibility that Trump is in debt to some Russian oligarchs that would be revealed in his tax returns, which he refuses to release.   Clinton has a new tv ad that raises a lot of these questions about Trump's connections with Putin and the Russians.

I repeat a question I have often raised;  I still do not know the answer.    Why are presidential nominees not required to have a security clearance before being given highly classified security briefings?  I seriously doubt that Donald Trump could pass even the basic level clearance.  I suppose it's the old principle that our civil government ultimately controls the military.    But shouldn't you have to qualify for a security clearance as a basic requirement to be commander-in-chief?   I've never heard this discussed.  Stay tuned.

Ralph

Some advice for the Clinton campaign

The star of "Late Night with Seth Meyers" had some advice for the anti-Trump forces:  “Trump is digging his own grave, don’t grab the shovel, let him keep digging until the hole is too deep to climb out of.   Stay out of it.”

This reminds me of my favorite bit of political strategy. I first remember hearing it in the Bush v Gore presidential race.   "When your opponent is shooting himself in the foot, don't get in his way."

Ralph

Clinton leads Trump . . . . in Georgia ! ? ! ?

In an Atlanta Journal-Constitution poll of registered Georgia voters released on Friday, Hillary Clinton is leading Donald Trump in a 1 to 1 matchup by 44% to 41%.    In a four-way matchup, the result was:   Clinton 41%, Trump 38%, Johnson 11%, Stein 2%.

Georgia?     Red state Georgia, where every statewide elected official is Republican and both legislative bodies are controlled by Republicans.  Where two years ago Jason Carter (a popular state senator and grandson of Jimmy Carter) and Michelle Nunn (daughter of popular former U. S. Senator Sam Nunn), ran for governor and U. S. Senator.   If any Democrats could have won, they were them.   Both were defeated -- only two years ago. 

That's our state that Hillary Clinton is now leading.  Cautious optimism:   This is a relatively small sample (767) and it is one poll in a very volatile time.   But the optimism is warranted and suggests it's worth working to turn Georgia purple.   Actually, it's already purple.   Let's work to turn it blue.

Ralph